Designing Woman Plays Many Roles

There's nothing like a stack of dirty dishes in the sink to help Bridget Bartlett unwind after two weeks or so on the road.

''I love to do dishes,'' she said. ''Housework is vacation time for me. The kids always save at least a day of dishes for me.''

Bridget Bartlett, who commutes to Orlando from Ocala, is a backstage backbone for the New Orleans jazz cabaret show at Mardi Gras, the first business to open in the Mercado shopping plaza on Orlando's International Drive. She's a costumer, the person responsible for designing and producing all those colorific costumes for the fast-paced show.

''Once I called up the kids and said I'd be home soon, that I was so homesick and tired. So they piled up every pot and pan and dish in the corner and put up a sign, 'Welcome home, Mom. Dishes waiting.' The kids meet me and pick me up.''

Home for the tiny (4 feet, 10 inches, 90 pounds) widow is the house in Ocala where two of her sons, 19 and 18, and a daughter, 16, still live. Another son, 24, an accountant, is also staying there, temporarily, and another daughter, 23, is a Chicago resident.

On a recent evening backstage at Mardi Gras, Bridget Bartlett gave her age as 47. ''Whatever I feel like on a particular day,'' she said, ''that's how old I am.''

About a dozen years ago her life could have been the plot for a splendid sob story: five children to raise, and a husband with a serious, lingering illness to care for. Money was scarce. It was not unusual for her to miss a meal.

But she wasn't interested in sob stories. ''I have a sense of self worth,'' she said. ''So we sat around and tried to figure out what I could do. I had no ability.''

Except that she was a whiz at a sewing machine.

''I started sewing when I was 12 or 13. I had polio and rheumatic fever, and my grandfather made me a sewing table. I was a paper doll child. Actors, really, are paper dolls all grown up.''

A set designer friend, Frank Bennett, got Bartlett to help with costuming in little theater in Ocala, but she also took on alterations work for a men's clothing store, making daily pickups and staying up all night sewing.

In 1975 she hired on at Six Gun Territory, a nearby attraction, as a cashier ''just to get my foot in the door. That gave me new respect for all the ladies at check-out stands.''

A year later she moved into costuming for Six Gun Territory, work that also required traveling to its three sister attractions in other parts of the country. Six Gun Territory closed several times in the early 1980s, and finally bit the dust in 1983.

But Bartlett's skill was still in demand, and she made a deal to costume six musicals a year in Orlando for David Rovine's Once Upon a Stage.

''I loved all my employers,'' she said, ''but I'm still partial to David. He gave me the security and dignity I needed.''

This led to other theaters, including the Caldwell in Boca Raton and the Burt Reynolds in Jupiter, and eventually to a call in September from Mardi Gras, her biggest costuming job to date.

''I love the new show and all the people in it. I never worked with anyone I disliked. Well, there were a couple I preferred not to be around, but I don't get into hate or waste time.''

An observer might wonder where she gets the stamina to work 18-hour days and whip up a half-dozen cancan costumes with 50 yards of material in each. Some co-workers have wondered if she even has a personal life.

''I'm a tough old bird,'' she said. ''My life has had many emotional rewards. My husband, Bill, my best friend, died two years ago, and I miss him. But I don't need a husband now. Well, sometimes after working 18 hours, yes, it'd be nice to have someone hold you.''